A new species of weevil from Brazil is a pretty convincing mimic of a flesh fly of the family Sarcophagidae. Timorus sarcophagoides has large reddish spots on its thorax that look from a distance like the red eyes of a flesh fly and its body colouration rounds out the act. The alternating light and dark stripes of the thorax and elytra, or hardened forewings, of the weevil mirror precisely those of a sarcophagid. Were that not enough, the latter half of the elytra changes in texture to resemble the transparent wings of a fly and the weevil even behaves like a fly in its movements on exposed leaves and stems.

While it is the first fly-mimicking weevil from South America and a savanna habitat, it is not unique. Fly mimics of the weevil subfamily Conoderinae were first reported in the 1970s from tropical forests in Central America by biologist Henry Hespenheide. Since, he has reported scores of such species in this single subfamily alone. While many mimic red-eyed flies, not all mimic flesh flies. Other models include the families Tachinidae, Muscidae and Tabanidae. None of these flies is particularly dangerous or distasteful and it is likely their quick reflexes and agility that dissuade would-be predators from wasting time chasing them or, as it turns out, quite a few similarly day-active weevils.

The new species was described by Drs Sergio A Vanin of the Universidade de São Paulo and Tadeu J Guerra of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais from the vicinity of Serra do Cipó national park in south-eastern Brazil. Both adults and larvae are associated with the mistletoe Psittacanthus robustus in an areas of shallow, acidic and nutrient-poor soil marked by open fields, outcrops of rocks, bushes and a few small trees. Adults were observed feeding on soft tissues of flower buds and leaf axils. In January and February, females were seen laying eggs in the host's roots, where their rhizophagous larvae bore into the haustoria.

This article was edited on 24 January to correct an error in the picture caption which had said that the flesh fly on the right was a weevil